"Smack!"
Jiang Yuchi delivered the slap with brutal force. Jiang Zhiyi’s head snapped to the side, his face a mask of shock and agony.
She rubbed her wrist, her voice cold. "Stop acting like a lunatic. You know perfectly well that we were going to break up, regardless of Yujie."
He looked pathetic. His bewildered gaze fell upon the hand that had just struck him, where the square-cut pink diamond shimmered, bright enough to sear his eyes.
Two months after he had been confined to the house, his mother had brought an electronic device to him for the first time, claiming a friend had sent her an interesting video.
In the video, Yujie was down on one knee. Jiang Yuchi’s expression had started off guarded, but when the ring box opened to reveal the magnificent "Laurel Goddess," she visibly softened. A moment later, she nodded tentatively. The background cheers reached a crescendo as Yujie and Jiang Yuchi kissed, and the video ended there.
Madam Jiang took back her phone, instructed the servants to look after their young master, and left with the satisfaction of one who had just won a war.
That night, he dug a velvet box from his bedside drawer. Under the moonlight, a pear-cut sapphire and a pear-cut diamond nestled together, their tips touching to form a shape resembling a heart.
This style of ring, pairing a pear-cut sapphire with a pear-cut diamond, was first proposed by Napoleon. When he proposed to Josephine, he had moved her with this very "Toi et Moi" ring. The difference was that in Napoleon’s ring, the tips of the stones pointed north and south, representing the two lovers. Jiang Zhiyi, however, had turned the tips to touch. He had always believed that the reason Napoleon and Josephine failed to remain together was because their stones did not face the same direction.
This ring was supposed to have been placed on Jiang Yuchi’s finger by his own hand at their engagement party three months ago. Now, he was merely a faithless man who had cheated in her eyes, trapped in his room without even the chance to defend himself.
But even if he could appear before her, what would it matter?
The young master who had been accustomed to getting whatever he wanted since childhood realized for the first time how utterly powerless he was. He could neither resist Yujie, who wielded absolute power in Jing City, nor could he defy his parents. He recognized clearly now that without his identity as a scion of the Jiang Family and the support of his parents, he couldn't take a single step forward.
That night, the cold moonlight spilled through the window onto Jiang Zhiyi. He shivered as if frozen, and in the darkness, he pulled the curtains shut.
In the pitch-black room, he tossed and turned, unable to sleep. Distraught, he climbed out of bed and went to the desk, taking a bottle of sleeping pills from the drawer. He had been relying on them to sleep every night for the past two months, but today, stimulated by the video Madam Jiang had shown him, he didn't realize until he returned to his senses that the entire bottle was empty.
His head swam, and he didn't even register what he had done. He crawled back into bed on hands and knees, used his last shred of consciousness to pull the quilt tight, and clutched the ring as he fell into a deep, dark dream.
He survived, a feat of pure luck; beyond his own resilience, it was only through Yujie’s intervention.
That night, Yujie had received word of Jiang Zhiyi’s suicide attempt immediately. He had mobilized the best medical resources in Jing City, demanding he be saved at any cost.
After his brush with death, Jiang Zhiyi matured significantly. The young master who had once believed only in immediate gratification was transformed. He began studying, investing, and expanding his business territory day and night. People’s titles for him gradually shifted from "Young Master Jiang" to "President Jiang."
In the years that followed, the moment of greatest despair for Jiang Zhiyi wasn't hearing that Jiang Yuchi and Yujie had married, but receiving the news of Yujie’s death in a plane crash.
At that instant, Jiang Zhiyi felt a chill run through his entire body. He finally understood: the reason Yujie had spent a fortune to save him that night was not because he still cherished him as a younger relative.
Yujie had been afraid. He was terrified that if Jiang Zhiyi actually died, the truth of his schemes might eventually surface. If Jiang Yuchi discovered the truth, she would remember a dead man for the rest of her life.
Jiang Yuchi’s departure hadn't been her fault. It was his own. He had been too weak in the face of Yujie and his parents—too weak to even earn a seat at the table to challenge them.
And before he could grow wings strong enough to go head-to-head with Yujie, Yujie had used such despicable means to win over everyone forever.
Just like now. Jiang Yuchi had only heard him speak a few ill words about Yujie before delivering that sharp, ringing slap, her gaze colder than the moonlight that had shone into his room on the night he swallowed those pills.
Seeing him look as though he had suffered some great injustice, Jiang Yuchi remained unmoved. Regaining control of her volatile emotions, she delivered a final, cold blow: "After all this time, surely you haven't failed to come up with an excuse for why you vanished without a word at our engagement party?"
Jiang Zhiyi’s spirit visibly crumbled. He sat down, his limbs rigid, looking like a schoolboy caught in a mistake, completely at a loss. After a long silence, he lowered his head in defeat and murmured, "I’m sorry..."
"I can't say."
His voice was broken. Those four simple words sounded as if his throat were being shredded from the inside. His dark eyes, once filled with arrogance, now welled with mist as he looked at Jiang Yuchi in silent supplication.
"What? Did Yujie’s ghost visit you in a dream to threaten you this time?" Jiang Yuchi lowered her gaze, her voice dripping with mockery.
They were destined to break up. It had started the moment Jiang Zhiyi deliberately avoided his mother’s dislike of her and insisted on holding their engagement party his own way; it had started the moment he vanished from that party, leaving her alone to face the strange, judging stares of the crowd.
Yujie’s appearance had merely been the catalyst that gave her the courage to make a dignified exit from a relationship that had withered at its roots long ago.